Lost in Translation

This has nothing to do with our normal blog fare. It is a break from all the madness we see everyday and who knows some of you might want to visit this quaint little German town someday. I cleaned this article up slightly because dropping an “F bomb” tends to get folks banned.

DEREK SCALLY, 1 April, Irish Times
IF YOU’RE moved to drown your sorrows after a week of financial gloom, a German brewer has produced a drink that might just match your feelings. The company has been allowed by the European Trademarks Office to register a new brand of beer under the label “F*cking Hell”.

The brewers say their “hell” – German for light ale – is named after the Austrian village of F*cking (pronounced Fooking) near Salzburg. But the 93 F*cking villagers are worried that the unsolicited dedication will boost further the village’s notoriety among English-speaking tourists.
-I can a visualize Doc giggling at the town name and Memaw getting ready to send me an email.

The EU’s Trademarks and Designs Registration Office had dismissed the original application, finding that it “used sexuality in order to express contempt and violent anger”. The board said it felt obliged to impose a limit on trademark names “in the case of upsetting, accusatory or derogatory signs”.

But the registration office’s appeals board overturned the original decision saying that, while it understood hell was “in Christian terms, the place of highest torment . . . Nor can it be considered as reprehensible to use existing place names in a targeted manner (as a reference to the place), merely because this may have an ambiguous meaning in other languages.

“The word combination contains no semantic indication that could refer to a certain person or group of persons,” the appeals board ruled. “Nor does it incite a particular act. It cannot even be understood as an instruction that the reader should go to hell. The meaning assumed by the examiner is, overall, an interjection used to express a deprecation, but it does not indicate against whom the deprecation is directed.”

No one, however, is cheering the news in the village of F*cking, 40km north of Salzburg near the border with Germany. Week in, week out, locals watch with a mixture of resignation and annoyance as tour buses pull up at the main road into their village. They like to have their picture taken in front of the place name sign urging drivers to reduce their speed: “F*cking – bitte nicht so schnell ” (please not so fast).
-I admit I had to fight the urge to post the picture. It is available on google images if you tend to be as juvenile as I do.

“There is nothing funny in the name to us and so I see no reason for all this,” said village mayor Franz Meindl. “There’s nothing we can do about it if other people laugh about it. We pronounce it differently in our dialect and it was never funny in any way.”
-Another little tip, the English word “dude” means “worm” in Arabic, so the next time you see your favorite neighborhood imam greet him with a warm smile and a heart felt “yo Dude sup?” Now, that is funny I don’t care who you are. Make sure you are wearing a “nike” logo shirt he will understand it.

For anyone kicking themselves for missing out on this dubious beer marketing opportunity, consolation is near at hand. The village of Petting is still open for offers. It’s a short road from Petting to F*cking – about 35km.

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